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Dessert

French Batter for Kromeskies

A light French batter made with flour, salt, salad oil, tepid water, and egg whites, used for frying oysters or other foods.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

French Batter for Kromeskies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix flour, salt, and salad oil in a bowl.

  2. Add tepid water gradually, mixing lightly to avoid a stringy texture.

  3. Whisk egg whites until frothy and fold them into the batter.

Fry

  1. Dip oysters or your choice of food into the batter and fry.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the batter and thickens it as it is mixed with liquid.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they add lightness and help the batter puff when fried.

The step that matters

Add tepid water gradually, mixing lightly. Overmixing flour and liquid develops gluten, which makes the batter stringy and tough rather than light. Adding water slowly and stopping once combined keeps the coating tender and even.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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